Thursday, September 29, 2011

New blog

Why a blog? Clearly there is enough chatter in the world. For an overview, see "about me" pane. To expand: I need to have a repository to save all of the items that I encounter daily that later I wish I could find again. Why not let others see this? So here it is.

As mentioned on the sidebar, I know from talking to friends outside of medicine that they really don't know how medicine functions in actual practice. What they know is an amalgamation of what they see while waiting in the doctor's office, or what they read in the media. Two small windows on medicine.

It used to be that medicine impacted your life when you were ill. Now, however, it affects you everyday. Discussions of the cost of insurance, inability to quit your job, fear of even bankruptcy. All of these things are in our collective consciousness daily. Add to that the litany of "xxx found not to be good for you" and it seems we are saturated with medical or medical-related data daily. And, again, most of it is questionable information at the very best.

My attitude generally toward the information I get in the media is to not believe it, particularly on the subject of medicine. I recommend this to you. Require more proof that "Dr. Z says". Require more proof than even "published in the New England Journal of Medicine" Without an actual count, I would say that most, if not the very large majority of what is presented to us dissolves away as untruth within a very short time. Some findings do stand the test of time, but the cacophony of new information presented as solid truth to us in the media generally (as in most often) will not stand the test of time, and is untrue.